Understanding QM Tags

UNDERSTANDING QM TAGS

Uniforms and clothing for the CCC were provided by the US Army's Quartermaster Corps (QMC). 

In the 1930s the QMC was a vast industrial enterprise. Regional Quartermaster Depots (QMDs) located throughout the country supplied shoes, uniforms and equipment to Army posts and garrisons in their service areas. Certain of these Depots were more than just warehouses--they also included design studios, contract and procurement offices, and vast workshops. Among these major depots were Philadelphia, which specialized in the design, manufacture and procurement of clothing and textiles; Boston, which specialized in shoes and footwear (New England was the historic center of the US shoe industry); and Jeffersonville, Indiana, which specialized in leather belts, canvas packs, and web gear.

Some Army equipment was made in-house. More commonly, uniform items were manufactured by civilian firms under contract.  Each such garment had sewn into it a tag identifying the contract under which it was produced, and the specification -- i.e., the approved pattern -- to which it should adhere.  Contract codes began with a W (War Department), followed by a number code for the supervising Quartermaster Depot (669, for example, indicates the Philadelphia QMD), followed by a contract number in lineal sequence. 

Reading these contract codes is the key to identifying Civilian Conservation Corps garments.  Each contract for CCC clothing was identified in the contract code as a CCC procurement rather than general Army contract. To denote the CCC contracts, the Quartermaster Corps inserted the letters ECF (Emergency Conservation Fund), ECW (Emergency Conservation Work), or CIV (Civilian), into the contract code before the lineal contract number. The first two abbreviations were used until about 1936; after a period of transition, CIV became the common code from 1938 onward.

The Quartermaster Corps would spend its own money to execute the contracts. Periodically QM accountants would total up the value of the CCC contracts and bill the Treasury Department for reimbursement. The Treasury would repay the War Department out of the CCC Treasury Department account.

To cut to the chase:

Quartermaster Corps garment tags containing the letters ECF, ECW, or CIV in the contract number definitively identify a garment as having been bought with CCC funds. By extension, they also identify a clothing specification approved for CCC issue.

Specification codes were organized by material. Cotton goods were in class 6, silk in class 7, wool in class 8, and leather in class 9.  A pair of khaki cotton trousers, for example, might conform to Specification 6-254 -- the 254th specification in the cotton goods class. Minor changes to the specification would be noted by appending a letter to the code; Specification 8-83B would be the second version of Specification 8-83 for wool trousers. 

For garments which were specific to the CCC and not intended for issue to the Army, the Quartermaster usually published only a dated Tentative Specification. Such procurements were deemed short-term or exceptional, and not worth recording with a standing specification number.